Although the new iPhone 5c starts at only...

including China. The entry-level model will cost $549 for U.S. consumers who opt for an unlocked, contract-free version through T-Mobile, and the step-up 32-GB version will cost $649, according to Apple’s website. The one 5c SKU featured at Apple’s Chinese website, meanwhile, will cost 4,488 renminbi ($733.44 at $1 = 6.12 renminbi). The 5c is “priced too high to make a significant dent in the smartphone market in emerging countries,” said Analysys Mason analyst Ronan de Renesse on Wednesday. The analyst doesn’t think the 5c is “positioned as a low-cost device” because it’s “billed exactly the same” as the iPhone 5 would have been after the launch of the upgraded 5s if Apple didn’t opt to drop that model, he said. At $549 unsubsidized, the 5c “remains at the same price point as the existing mid-range model” in Apple’s smartphone line, the 4S, said Francis Sideco, IHS director-consumer electronics and communications technologies, in a news release. Due to that pricing, the 5c seems to be a “midrange product that cannot significantly expand the available market for the iPhone line to lower-income buyers,” he said. The launch of the 5c “will not spur a major increase” in iPhone sales in the back half of 2013, as previously expected, and IHS opted not to upgrade its forecast of iPhone shipments in the second half of this year, it said. “If Apple had hit a $350 to $400 unsubsidized price range for the iPhone 5c, as some had speculated, the company might have had a chance to expand its smartphone shipments beyond what we originally expected” in the back half, said Sideco. “Even at a subsidized price of $99 with a two-year contract, the 5c will not spur sales because it does not materially expand Apple’s addressable market past the level we had already taken into account.” Apple will ship 158.9 million iPhones in 2013, compared to a forecast total for the entire smartphone market of 1.1 billion units, IHS projected. But it agreed with de Renesse that a deal with China Mobile could help Apple significantly. Although Apple “did not address the low end of the market” with its Tuesday announcement, the 5c still “represents a major departure from its previous product strategy, which could improve the company’s competitiveness,” said IHS. “With the new models, Apple is taking steps to bolster its share of the global smartphone market in the face of rising competition,” said Ian Fogg, IHS director-mobile and telecoms. He pointed to “innovation” in the iPhone design and features with iOS 7, signaling that Apple is “now also innovating at lower price points, too.”